By Britt Schramm
September 7, 2004
Recently, I’ve been dreaming about doing something crazy. No, it doesn’t involve converting to the Evil Empire up in the Bronx, touring with Survivor at greater Starbucks stores across the country or investing in the Gold Index like old, reliable Pat Boone has told me over and over again.
Ya see, this crazy thought concerns comic books but not the way that some people with over-active imaginations think of (usually involving either Lois, Susan or Selina in some sexual liaison).
It usually comes about when I’m stuck in a meeting at my regular job as I try to punch out my ear drum with a pen as an endless MS PowerPoint presentation drones on in front of me. Or when I visit a customer’s desk to fix a broken printer and it finally comes to light that the customer in question thought it would be easier just to manually move the disabled printer head rather than wait for me to get up there to fix it. Wonderful people, I tell you. So, you can see why I would possibly daydream about something else.
So, what is it, you ask? Well, I want to open a good, old-fashioned, brick and mortar comic book store.
See? Isn’t that crazy talk?
If you don’t see the madness in my declaration, allow me to fill you in. For those people who haven’t read this column before, I’ve recently complained about the Death of the Superhero (click here to read), the unfortunate recycling of 90’s comic trends (click here to read) and the disappearance of the formerly very profitable Back Issue Bins (click here to read). So with all those complaints, why would a sane man (at least I think I am) want to go into a sketchy proposition like being an owner of a comic shop? To tell you the truth, I really don’t know myself. All I know is that the idea keeps nagging at me. And what’s worse is that I have so many thoughts about this store that the idea of opening one seems more and more plausible.
However, with no working capital and with a 17-month-old, I just can’t quit the current job in order to chase this pipe dream. Nevertheless, I’ve got to get my brainstorms out there so I can sleep better during those mid-morning meetings. And guess who gets to read these pearls of inspiration from my grey matter? That’s right. It’s the lucky readers of the Longbox. Go ahead and pinch yourselves; you’re not dreaming, my dear friends.
Now, none of these plans are ground-breaking. Hell, some of them are probably in practice right now in other stores out there in the country or even around the globe. But, there also some other practices in place by some comic stores out there that I can’t stand. So, the following comic book imaginings are what I would and would not want in my dream store (I’m not sure what the name of the place is gonna be yet; let’s just call it for now Brady’s Comics after my son):
Mallrats – Aside from the obvious View Askew reference (my first here at the ‘Shoot), I want my store to be in a regular, enclosed mall. Almost all of the stores that I’ve visited are either in strip malls or in an office park (Virginia must be the official strip mall capital of the world. I mean, you can’t go 2 blocks without seeing one. It’s like a plague on Starbuck-ian proportions.). To me, the only way to get these books read by the masses is to have a comic book store in a mall. My kind of store, not like the last one that I saw in a mall, which was Another Universe, a brick and mortar chain in the Metro Washington DC area as well as an online retailer. If you don’t know AU, they tried to be everything to everyone – a store for Sci-Fi fans, a store for Anime fans, a store for those who did not have a Hot Topic or a Spencer’s and a comic book store. Definitely, a recipe for disaster. My store wouldn’t be like that. Plus, how great would it be to leave the store and go to Orange Julius for a smoothie or two. My favorite line from “Mallrats” is “I love the smell of commerce in the morning!” Brodie, my friend, you never said truer words.
It’s Trade City, baby – The first thing that I would require in my store is to have almost all of the trade paperbacks and original graphic novels that are in print. I know that the monthly books are the lifeblood of a comic book store but I have felt for some time that the whole industry will move to the collect format in the very near future for a bunch of reasons (I wrote about the need for the big companies moving to the collected format in a column for my other website about a couple of years ago. When that shift does finally happens, I’ll have to reprint it so everyone can see that I’m ahead of the times. Just you wait.). And when the monthlies slowly reduce in number, the ability to store the thicker books will be a necessity. As a result, I can picture my store having tons of shelf space with facings (the ability to have the covers facing outwards) for all of the good stuff.
A No-Card Zone – The second thing that I would do is ban all cards (whether they’d be gaming cards or trading ones - comic or non-comic, it does not matter) from the store. It’s not like I hate those three-inch cardboard collectibles; I detest them. Why, did I hear you ask? Well, it’s because they’re a complete waste of time, they always seem to cater to speculators disguised as buyers and the practice of getting them is to teach kids that the cards are used for making a quick buck off of some poor sap than to really collect and enjoy them. You can’t convince me otherwise. So, even if all of the kids love them to death, I will not allow them to enter my store. In fact, there would be a sign posted in the store specifically saying that there are no cards in the store. Consider it my Trading Card Prohibition policy.
Drugstore Cowboy – When I first started reading comics back in the early '80s, I got my all of my books at a convenience store (Laverdiere's Super Drug Store in Brunswick, ME). Let me tell you; there was nothing like going down there with my hard earned paper route money in hand and blowing it all on comics and high-fructose, teeth-decaying stuff like the always wonderful Lik-Em-Aid. Nowadays, the newsstand market is all but an afterthought by both the readers and the comic book companies. In my store, there’ll be a small section where a couple of spinner racks with all ages books as well as a candy counter featuring all of the best cavity creating stuff around. (Then, I’ll get a dentist group to move into the space next door so I can get a piece of the action from the cavity filling business. Hey, it’ll be like a full service comic books store; just imagine the marketing possibilities – Hey kids, get gassed and get some comics! That’s a scenario where everybody wins.)
Just Say No (to Action Figures) – While I like Action Figures and even collect some of them, I really don’t want to see them in my store. There really too many out there to possibly carry them all and who would really want to? More times than not, you see them in the discount area since they didn’t sell the first time around. Basically, I just don’t see those things being very good for business. Hey, those molded plastic forms didn’t pull Toys R Us out of bankruptcy, did they?
You’ve Got Mail – In the area that I live in, there’s a lot of people who are in a constant state of transit (either coming into town or getting on the next plane out of here). So, I’d probably offer those special customers an extended grace period for them to pick up their pull books and other pre-ordered items. Or have them pay for them via credit card and have them shipped to their current location if they need the fix as soon as possible. Sometimes, it’s just the little things that make a big difference. At least that’s what I hear from the wife all of the time.
Get outta here, all of you Variants – In my store, "variant" would be a four-letter word and would not be uttered within the store’s friendly confines. To provide a reason for this action, let me relate a true life story that just happened last week. I was helping out at my local store by covering for my manager while she ate lunch. This dude comes in and asks if the shop has any of the seven new Dynamic Forces Transformers Variant covers. I told him about the bust of the whole 80’s nostalgia for comic properties and that the store rarely sells enough of those comics to garner one cover much less seven. He again tells me that there are seven covers. I replied that I understood that there were seven but there was no way in hell that this store would have even one of those covers. Nothing against DF and most of what they sell, but in my store, that conversation would never have happened. Period. End of sentence.
To recap, my store (aka Brody’s Comics) will be in a mall with tons of trades and graphic novels. The store will offer great services like a small area devoted to spinner racks and candy and long distance comic book shipping. And it will not have cards of any kind and zero action figures. And variants (and references to variants) will be kept to a minimum. It’s the perfect store. People will come from miles around to step into the doors and take it all in. It’ll be the “Field of Dreams” of comic books. At least for me it will.
OK, enough of talking of my dream store. It’s time to wake up and go to another meeting. Yipee for me. Maybe the laptop will be infected or I’ll get called away to fix a paper jam in a printer or get a root canal. Please, anything other than having to go to another meeting. I’m begging you.
In honor of Labor Day, there will be no Uncensored Reactions this week. That and there were no books that I wanted to review. However, I will leave you with the cover of Warlock #1 which will be out on Thursday. Although the cover was goofy enough to deserve it, I decided that making fun of it was too easy. By the way, is it me or does the lightning bolt on Adam’s chest looks eerily similar to a certain Big Red Cheese of Marvel’s Distinguished Competition. Call me crazy (Oh yeah, I forgot I already am).
That’s it for now. Have a good Labor Day, my Longbox congregation. I'll see you in two.
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